NOTE: Contribute to this ever growing list of valuable marketing tips and tricks for small business owners. Connect with the curator here…And please click share and help spread the word!
Internet marketing is the single most important strategy a business should focus on. Most small business treat their website as if it were an online brochure, which is a huge mistake. I have curated a growing list of The Top Marketing Tactics that -will increase the success of your website.
# 1 Sandy Rowley – Reno SEO Expert @ RenoWebDesigner.com
“Place a strong call to action on every page of your website. The ideal place to put this call to action is either top center or top right side of your website. AmericanExpress.com has a good example of a strong call to action on their site. Another good idea is to have your photo, name, phone number, address in these areas making it easy for your website viewers to get in touch with you.”
#2 Blogging Marketing Expert @ AllyssaBarnes.com
” Adding a SEARCH BAR to your website. Even the most organized sites can benefit from a search bar. While a well thought out category and tag system is essential, sometimes it’s just quicker to find what you want via a search bar. If you’re making your site visitors scan through tons of pages just to find what they want, then you’re doing it wrong. As I said earlier, people are lazy. Placing a search bar somewhere at the top of your site will allow people to quickly and easily search your site content.”
# 3 Michael Donlop – Internet Marketing Blogger at INCOME
“Facebook, Twitter & pinterest.com. Pick one and dominate it, stop sucking at all 3. Or alternatively hire someone to look after your social media and make them responsible for the outcome.”
# 4 Written by
“A Great Theme is key to a successful website. The first step to a successful website is in having a great theme. Now, with this, you can either choose to use a ‘stock’ theme and tweak it to the way you want it to look or use a professional developer to develop a theme for you.
In the past, I tended to go for option one since it was a lot cheaper as stock themes tended to be free. However, I wasted a huge amount of time trying to tweak themes and trying to learn coding in order to tweak the themes the way I wanted them to look. Long story short is that it really did not work out. Therefore, although it is going to initially cost you more to begin with, hiring a professional or buying a professional theme is the best way to go and it is the way successful websites will tend to go down too.”
# 5 Highwayman fecit mmx D Bnonn Tennant
Te Awamutu 3800, New Zealand
“If a site omits these, it’s going to struggle:
- a compelling headline,
- engrossing copy,
- and a clear call to action.
And if you’re considering hiring a web designer whose own site omits these, look elsewhere. You can have the most stunning visual style in the world; the slickest effects; the most user-friendly forms and who knows what else—but with the hammer falling empty on those first three chambers, your site isn’t going to be hitting anything.”
# 6 Engaging User Experience by BY MEGHAN BELNAP
The Internet is cluttered with information overload. Online users are bombarded daily with too much information, sometimes, in a very messy way. Offering a company website that is well laid out, simple to navigate, and easy to read can go a long way in creating a positive experience for online visitors.
Jakob Nielsen, a guru on website usability, explains, “The average page visit lasts a little less than a minute. As users rush through Web pages, they have time to read only a quarter of the text on the pages they actually visit (let alone all those they don’t). So, unless your writing is extraordinarily clear and focused, little of what you say on your website will get through to customers.”
# 7 Ray Higdon’s Network Marketing Blog
“Do you have a good giveaway? Are you building your email list? It is pointless for you to get more traffic and to be marketing a blog that doesn’t have a good giveaway. That speaks to your target market and offers them something that they actually want. The number one source of our traffic, this is a little secret, the number one source of our traffic is traffic that we own which is our email list. Now a lot of people don’t understand that because they’re constantly looking for new traffic from different places. Our number one source of traffic is our own traffic, it is the email list that we’ve built and when we do a new blog post we send it to that email list to let them know that we have a new blog post and they click it and they check it out.
In the video on my website above, I share several tips around marketing your blog and creating that profitable lead-generating website you have always wanted!”
# 8
Hi! I’m Jim Connolly and I help small business owners to make more sales, boost their profits and build amazing businesses. You can find out more here.
Offer flexible payment options
“I’m often amazed at the limited payment options offered by small businesses. A lack of flexible payment alternatives, means those businesses are leaving money on the table. Worst of all, it’s totally avoidable.
Thanks to services like PayPal, it has never been easier for small business owners to accept payment via credit card, debit card and charge cards. If you factor the payment fees into your prices correctly, all those additional transactions needn’t cost you a penny.”
Propelmarketing.com
# 9 Giveaway Campaigns
Social media giveaways are great social media campaign ideas if you are looking to increase engagement and get more followers. Just make sure that what is being given away is related to your business. You want entrants to be interested in your business, so that any followers or engagers you get from the campaign can also be potential leads.
Instagram Giveaways
There are different ways to get entrants for giveaways. For example, on Instagram, users can enter by following your account and liking your post, or reposting it with a custom hashtag. Another way users can enter an Instagram giveaway is by tagging another user in the comment section of the contest photo.
Facebook Giveaways
On Facebook, you could create a post for contest to your business page, and have users enter by liking and commenting on that post. Or, you could ask a question in your post, and users could enter by answering the question in the comments.
If you are asking a question, it’s a good idea to ask a question that has something to do with your services or your audience’s preferences. This way, entries can provide you with feedback about your services or insights about your target audience.
# 10 Invest on knowledge
Our job as consultants is actually simple. I use a very simple hack to better understand my job, whenever I start working on a new campaign. I just ask myself these 2 questions:
What’s the goal? – having goals make it easier to have effective and aligned action plans
What’s the problem? – knowing the problem allows you to come up with appropriate solutions
Essentially, what we do is we constantly find problems to solve. And you won’t be able to come up with the right solutions when you don’t have the knowledge. Our service heavily relies on knowledge. And that’s what’s in between the goal and the action, and the problem and the solution.
With the right knowledge, it’ll be a lot easier to determine the areas of your campaign that will yield more results (prioritization).
Mine Twitter to Grow Your Audience
# 11 Mark schaefer
While “if you build it they will come” is a great line from a movie, it’s a terrible marketing plan. To succeed on the Internet today, you have to create content that ignites and engages an audience. However, if you are a new blogger, you should probably spend more time developing an audience than creating your content.
Here are three easy but overlooked tactics you can use to build an audience on Twitter, which is arguably the best platform for this.
Identify Business Goals
# 12 By Houssem Daoud
Every piece of your social media strategy serves the goals you set. You simply can’t move forward without knowing what you’re working toward.1
Look closely at your company’s overall needs and decide how you want to use social media to contribute to reaching them.
You’ll undoubtedly come up with several personalized goals, but there are a few that all companies should include in their strategy—increasing brand awareness, retaining customers and reducing marketing costs are relevant to everyone.
# 13 Choose Channels and Tactics
By Houssem Daoud
Many businesses create accounts on every popular social network without researching which platform will bring the most return. You can avoid wasting your time in the wrong place by using the information from your buyer personas to determine which platform is best for you.
If your prospects or customers tell you they spend 40% of their online time on Facebook and 20% on Twitter, you know which primary and secondary social networks you should focus on.
When your customers are using a specific network, that’s where you need to be—not everywhere else.
Your tactics for each social channel rely on your goals and objectives, as well as the best practices of each platform.
# 14 by We’ve experimented with lots of different content marketing methods at Buffer, so I wanted to share with you 9 of the best ways we’ve found to increase engagement and improve your content strategy.
Especially after launching Buffer for Business recently, a lot of business approached us, asking which practical tips we had for them to improve their social media and content marketing.
So here are our best and most practical ways to see a big impact from your actions on social media
People have enough stuff, but they don’t have enough meaning. – Seth Godin
Once you’ve got a groundwork in place, set some goals. Why you do what you do, combined with what goals you want to achieve, will help you flesh out your strategy.
So let’s say you’re a photographer. Your goals are to hit 2,000 Instagram followers and sell 100 prints by the end of the year. If that’s the case, it probably makes sense to spend a lot more time on Instagram, rather than posting up flyers around town. You should spend your time writing blog posts (and great product descriptions) that tell the stories behind the images you’re selling, not buying ads on Facebook. Just being specific about what you’re trying to do will help you avoid wasting your time.
People read postcards when the message is brief. A small ad on a postcard can drive a high volume of traffic to your website and generate a flood of sales leads for a very small cost.
No single marketing effort works all the time for every business, so rotate several marketing tactics and vary your approach.
Your customers tune out after awhile if you toot only one note. Not only that, YOU get bored. Marketing can be fun, so take advantage of the thousands of opportunities available for communicating your value to customers. But don’t be arbitrary about your selection of a variety of marketing ploys. Plan carefully. Get feedback from customers and adapt your efforts accordingly.
Define Your Social Presence
There was a time when having a social presence meant signing up on all available platforms and sharing a bunch of content. Today, social media is a powerful marketing tool and customer service channel. Prospects expect you to engage with them more actively and personally, and search engines like Google tend to take notice. For best results, focus on two or three platforms and be very active.
# 17 By JODI HARRIS
Document your SEO strategy
If you follow CMI at all, you should already know that documenting your content marketing strategy is essential for success. Since SEO is a key part of that strategy, you should start your efforts by documenting your plans for using this technique, i.e., what your priorities are, what methods you work with, how you measure your performance, and what goals you want SEO to ultimately help you achieve. Depending on how far along your company is, you may need to write a basic strategy first, and then revisit it once you’ve audited and analyzed your current SEO efforts and data (more on that later!).
Obviously the purpose of SEO is about ranking well in the search engines to drive traffic to your website, but even that won’t mean much if your website is showing up in front of an audience that doesn’t care. The first thing you should always do is identify your target audience and learn all you can about them–demographics, search patters and preferences, geographic location, etc. A good way to do this is by diving into your Google Analytics account.
Drew Fortin | @Fortin
Make a List of Keywords
Keywords are at the heart of SEO, and selecting the right ones can make or break your SEO strategy. Compile a list of about 10 keywords associated with your product or services. Plug these keywords into Google’s Keyword Tool , and find variations that make sense for your business.
Monitor for Google updates
First and foremost, if you’re not already monitoring for upcoming updates, you should be.
Rumors of an impending Google Algorithm update are enough to give any SEO nightmares but tools designed to pre-empt this are plentiful.
Some even do the hard work for you. With AccuRanker’s Google Grump, you can subscribe to free alerts – filtered by country and device – that monitor ranking fluctuations that might signify an update, and send you a notification if anything unusual is happening.
SEO is a very volatile industry because of the many changes that take place in the Google algorithm within a period. The algorithm set in place this month may not be the same the next. It is an always evolving algorithm that encourages SEO specialists to stay on their toes and keep abreast with updates.
As we pass the years half way point and start to look towards 2022, it has become more important for specialists to look out for trends that can affect search rankings for their keywords in this new year.
Link Building
Links are a critical component of any SEO strategy, but not everyone understands how they work or how to leverage them correctly.
Here’s how they work: Part of Google’s search algorithm determines your site’s value by counting the number of incoming links. And each link has its own value based on how many links are going to that site, too, and so on. What this means, for example, is that a link to your site from Harvard.edu is weighted much more heavily than a link from Dr. Spink at spinkdentistry.com. (Although, maybe you’re a dentist, and if you are, then a link from the Spink is just fine). But the point remains the same: There is a complex system of determining factors that make one link more valuable than another.
But don’t be fooled, if you search for “SEO link building,” you’ll see tons of companies offering seemingly easy solutions, things like:
- Blog commenting
- Article marketing
- Press releases
- Business profile creation
- Directory links
These services are supposed to build you links, but unfortunately many of these solicitations are merely well-disguised hack techniques or outdated strategies that will damage your site, not help it… and they come from a combination of both known scumbag overseas companies and reputable companies alike, so stay on your toes.
Case in point: Matt Cutts (head of Google’s web spam team) flat out says press release links from syndication sites are now discounted. And to be fair, as a digital marketing agency, we used to practice this, and it was even considered a best practice at the time, but now it’s a complete waste of money to do any press releases for the sake of getting an inbound link; directories and business profiles have been devalued so long ago that I can’t even dig up a good blog post or link about it; and blog commenting is considered a link scheme in most cases and will actually get your site penalized! Since, we’ve become enlightened and have adapted and responded to the evolution of link building to help you move up in the rankings the right way instead of going backwards.
Don’t get the wool pulled over your eyes by agencies still using antiquated tactics—implement a link building strategy that is current, effective, and gets the nod from Google every time.
Content Strategy
Scrutinize Their Onsite Content
Scan your competitor’s site to locate their most shared pages; a tool like Social Crawlytics can help with this. By finding your competitors’ best-performing pieces of content, you can determine which topics and content types might work well for you, too.
Ensure you include content at every level, including large scale “hero” pieces, “hub” content (like guides), as well as “hygiene” pieces, including blog posts.
# 24 David McSweeney
Don’t Write Another Blog Post Until You’ve Conducted THOROUGH Keyword Research
Keyword research should be the starting point for any SEO or content marketing campaign.
Without researching which keywords people are actually searching for in your niche, you’ll be relying on luck, rather than data to guide your decisions.
And that’s no way to run your business.
After switching to a keyword focused approach to our content strategy, we grew our search traffic by 89% in just 3 months.
# 25 By Ben Sailer
Search engine optimization often seems like magic to newcomers.
The elements of a strong SEO strategy often aren’t obvious to an untrained eye. However, once you understand how the basics work, you can:
- Dramatically increase your organic search traffic
- Increase your conversion rate
- Generate more leads and revenue
Despite rumors to the contrary, SEO isn’t dead. Furthermore, even the best content needs some help getting found.
That’s where these 34 SEO tips will come in handy. Whether you’re a beginner just getting started, or an expert looking for a quick refresher, this post provides a basic understanding of the most essential elements necessary for SEO success. Plus, we’ve also included an on-page SEO checklist to help you nail every blog post you write.
Discover What Your Competitors are Doing
It’s a fact and one of my Top 10 SEO Tips, that search engines analyze incoming links to your website as part of their ranking criteria. Knowing how many incoming links your competitors have, will give you a fantastic edge. Of course, you still have to discover your competitors before you can analyze them.
Your analysis of competitors should include these extremely important linking criteria (super SEO tips), such as:
- Competitor rank in the search engines
- Quantity AND quality of incoming links (prioritized)
- What keywords are in the title of linking page?
- % of links containing specific keywords in the link text
- The Google PageRank™ or MozRank of linking pages
- The popularity of the linking domain and the linking page (measured by links & mentions)
Aside from using some of the awesome SEO software mentioned on this website, here are some things I personally do when researching a competitor:
- Click the link to their Site Map page and see what keyword you find in the links
- Get a savvy web person to find and parse their XML Site Map to find keywords in page names
- View the HTML title and meta tags of your top competitors to compile a list of needed content
# 28 By Ross Hudgens
CREATE A QUERY-ANSWERING POST OUTLINE
Building off the how-to tip, I also suggest you create a shell outline of every post topic you’re planning to create. This is something we’ve started to do for clients, and have seen nice value from – because it gets us thinking in the way a bot does, and sets us up for SEO best practices.
Google wants quick answers. That’s why the answer boxes exist. So if your post dilutes the path to answer, why would they want to return it? They want 10x content, yes, but they most importantly want the right answer.
By structuring your page to supply the answers within lists, H2s, H3s, and bold, you make it easy for users, and Google, to retrieve the answer, and be confident you have it.
# 29 Bruce Clay
Bruce Clay, who has been an industry leader with SEO since 1996, provides 100 helpful and useful 100 SEO Tips, which includes:
“A blog is primarily an awareness channel that will lead to micro-conversions, such as social sharing, page visiting, etc. These micro-conversions are important, because they keep you at the front of a customer’s mind when they need the product or service you offer.”
# 30 Trond Lyngbø
Trond Lyngbø – founder of SEOnomics.com, Head of SEO at MediaCom Norway, and columnist at Search Engine Land, stated on Search Engine Land you need to:
“Make sure that anything you buy — whether it’s a CMS, a web analytics platform, or a PPC management solution — will help you achieve your marketing goals.
# 31 Ann Smarty
Owner of myblogguest.com and respected SEO consultant Ann Smarty has this nifty reminder – you want people to do something while on your site. But, how can you achieve this? Ann stresses the importance of call-to-action and how why every element of your CTA matters, which includes: “The color of your buttons and supporting elements, the language you use to describe the action, the place on the page where you locate them, the additional elements that encourage people to act. All these elements should be consistent and support each other getting your visitors one step closer to their objective.”
# 32 Danny Sullivan
Search Engine Land Editor-in-Chief Danny Sullivan states on OPEN Forum that “one of the primary ways search engines decide which pages should rank well is by looking at links to those pages.” How can you build these valuable links? Danny suggests:
“Search engines want to reward sites that gain “hard links“—links that took an effort to gain. A guest post in a publication with a high standard, one that doesn’t let just anyone write, might be an example of a hard link…
The type of site where you might want to earn a link is one you and potential customers regularly read. Build a relationship with the site. Discover who runs it. Understand what type of content they publish, how they tend to link to external sources. Using that knowledge, suggest your site in an appropriate manner.”
# 33 Adam Connell
In an interview with The Daily Interview, Adam Connell (founder of Blogging Wizard) reminds us of the power of influencers.
“Tap into the audience of niche influencers: there’s a growing marketing trend known as ‘influencer marketing’. The idea is that you discover who your target audience is and then figure out who exactly influences them. Then you market your content directly to those influencers.”
# 34 Chad Pollitt
If you want to get your name out there as quickly as possible then “you need to get creative with how you promote your content,” according to VP of Audience and Co-founder of Relevance.com Chad Pollitt on HubSpot. One way to accomplish is by having a blend of Content Coverage (earned media through syndication, media relations), Content Broadcasting (owned media such as social media accounts) and Content Distributions (paid media like press releases, native advertising).
# 35 John Lincoln
If you weren’t aware, “Your link profile is so critical to your SEO performance,” Co-Owner & President at Ignite. what kind of profile do you have? Here are six basic SEO profiles created by John.
- Baby – new website
- Starting Strong – site over a year old and earning quality links
- Good Profile – site is over three years old and has a good reputation
- Slightly Spammy – over 25% of links are from spammy site
- Spammy – more than 40% of links are from spammy site
- Pure Spam – over of links are from spammy site
# 36 Aaron Wall
Aaron Wall, founder of SEO Blog, shares one thing many of us sometimes forget, “In SEO, verticals are often overlooked.” Aaron is talking about Google Optimization, as opposed to SEO, which is why we should look at search beyond Google. For example, if you’re an online merchant, and on Amazon, have you answered the following: “What does it take to be placed well on Amazon? What are people saying? What are their complaints? What do they like? What language do they use? “
# 37 Heather Lloyd-Martin
Heather Lloyd-Martin, pioneer of SEO copywriting, shared this piece of wisdom on Success Works:
“You know what makes me cringe? Overoptimized SEO content. Unfortunately, it still exists. What’s worse, I recently learned that some SEO writers are being taught that over optimization is “how you write for Google.” Argh! If you’re wondering if your content is pushing the optimization a bit too much, check out this post. Quickly. Please.”
Go native or go home.
Joe Pulizzi, a self-proclaimed content-marketing evangelist, calls native advertising the “gateway drug” to content marketing. If you’re smart, you’ll jump on the native-marketing train: Spending on these ads will reach $7.9 billion this year and $21 billion by 2018. Native advertising is expected to expand across numerous online platforms.
Marketers love this form of paid media because it fits organically. Native advertising doesn’t disrupt the user experience, so users can’t differentiate between what is paid advertising and what is part of the site.
The content usually is useful, interesting and targeted to a specific audience — all of which makes it one of the best platforms to launch any marketing campaign.
SEO Tactic for 2021 and Beyond: Optimize Website Images
Including images in your blog posts can indeed improve their overall look and performance. It helps visitors understand more about what you’re writing about and retain the information you offer way better. In this case, you also need to optimize these images for the search engines as well.
You can utilize the alternative (ALT) attribute of the images so the screen-reading tools can describe images to visually impaired readers. It also allows search engines to crawl better and rank your website. You should also consider reducing or compressing your images’ file size to make your website load faster. This way, you can make the visitors spend time longer on your website and reduce the bounce rate.
Author
Andre Oentoro is the founder of Breadnbeyond, an award-winning explainer video company. He helps businesses increase conversion rates, close more sales, and get positive ROI from explainer videos (in that order).
